Pretoria - Arcadia Shepherds football club has refuted a claim by the City of Tshwane that it had no lease to use its home ground Caledonian Stadium, one of South Africa’s oldest football venues.
To prove that a lease existed, general manager Lucky Manna produced minutes of a meeting with the municipality in January 2012 aimed at starting a working relationship between the council and the club.
The minutes recorded “the club has been paying the municipality for the past 15 years… payments are made into the old Northern Transvaal Football Association account”.
“If we have no lease, why have we been paying them all these years?” Manna asked. It was also recorded in the minutes that there was money in a trust account with the club’s lawyers that could be used to erect a new perimeter fence.
Manna said the money came from the city in exchange for support for the Nelson Mandela Corridor Development and the Department of Trade and Industry head offices. The development plans tabled to the club at the time included soccer facilities, according to the Arcadia boss.
He said the club received R850 000 from the city, a claim denied by acting mayoral spokeswoman Lebogang Matji, who said the club had no standing lease to use the Caledonian. Matji urged Arcadia to engage with the city to defuse the tension simmering since the council approved plans to redevelop and transform the Caledonian into an R88.2 million inner city park.
Arcadia, established in 1903 and rated among the country’s oldest football clubs, has blasted the city for going about its intentions without public consultation.
Manna said they believed the city never intended to discuss its plan with them, nor the public.
They are now using dialogue as a smokescreen, he said. “We are not against the planned redevelopment, but insist that it must be inclusive and beneficial to the entire city and its people,” said Manna.
“If it is only about getting Arcadia out of the stadium, then talk to us. We can come to an agreement.
“But we will not lift our intention to object to the demise of the stadium and will be taking legal action should the situation not change.”
Sport facilities developer Richard Rauff said the city did not care about the sporting needs of future generations. There was evidence, he said, that the city intended disposing of land that could be used for sport and related facilities, including Berea Park, home of soccer for many years.
Arcadia Shepherds is holding a “Save our Stadium” rally at the stadium from 10am on Thursday.
Pretoria News